Larsen Warner is pleased to present Material Impression: Artists & Paper. The exhibition offers an overview of the use and underlying significance of paper as an artistic medium; from a base material for more traditional drawing, painting and printmaking, through to its use as a sculpting material and a conduit for thoughts and ideas. Featuring the work of a cross generational group of artists, the exhibition presents an invigorating look at paper as a material and aims to cultivate in the viewers a deeper knowledge of a familiar and versatile medium.

Paper is one of humanity’s most important inventions and as a material became not only indispensable for record keeping and trade but has also proved essential to cultural interaction and intellectual exchange for over two millennia. Within the exhibition there are a variety of ways that artists have utilised paper as a foundation. Traditionally it could be said that artists have used paper to test out new strategies and to think through a larger idea with the immediacy of say pencil or charcoal. Claes Oldenburg’s Ice Bags and Bananas, 1969 is one such work; a single page from one of a number of artists notebooks that Oldenburg worked within, that gives us an intimate glimpse into his thoughts and a personal view into the mind of the artist.

The contemplative and lyrical worlds of Ryan Mosley, Tom Anholt, Gillian Carnegie and William Brickel play out across the papers surface within each of the artist’s works. Paper is a vital component to their painting practices and develops alongside their works on canvas. With the material affecting how the paint acts in a completely different way to primed canvas, paper affords each artist the opportunity to develop a richer and deeper understanding of their relationship to paint.

This deep understanding of the material is shared by Martha Jungwirth, where paper acts as the very physical foundation of her practice. In Untitled, 2013, Jungwirth’s subtle colour symphony is layered on cardboard and mounted onto canvas, emboding her dynamic working style with a fragility made visible by delicate marks and occasional drips.

 However, Material Impression takes a look beyond the mere mark-making of drawing to consider the material itself, exploring how artists have used paper itself as the focus of their work. Treating paper as a material with palpable threedimensional presence rather than as a mere support for mark-making, the works by Ron Gorchov, Richard Tuttle and Olivia Bax utilise processes such as paper pulping, tearing, folding, molding and binding to produce sculptural works that take a variety of forms with a diverse range of expressive and conceptual implications.

 Within room two of the gallery the exhibition demonstrates how artists have utilised paper as found object within their work. Yves Klein’s intimate Timbre Bleu, 1928 – 1962, two small stamps sat side by side in Klein’s iconic International Klein Blue are shown alongside Jonathan Monk’s Pierced Portraits #27 (Woman With Braided Hair), 2005 and Jake and Dinos Chapman’s Untitled (Queen as a Bank Robber), 2007. Monk’s intervention of a red pin pierced through a vintage portrait of a woman echos that of the Chapman Brothers use of a 20 pound note, playfully defacing the recently deceased Queen of England.

 Material Impression aims to highlight the originality and innovation with which artists, in using paper within a vast variety of contexts - experiment with a diversity of styles and statements. As Richard Tuttle once remarked:

“Paper has the capacity for every expression and dimension. If you’re sensitive to paper, it carries a state of reality”